Editorial - Wikipedia popularity from a citation analysis point of view

This study aims to provide an overview of the citation rate of Wikipedia since its launch in 2004. It is worth noting that since its inception Wikipedia, the free international multi-lingual encyclopedia, has been subject to criticism (Fasoldt, 2004; Orlowski, 2005; Lipczynska, 2005). Wikipedia as a popular web resource appears in response to every keyword search on Google. One way to test the popularity of a web resource is to use citation analysis method to predict to what extend it is cited by scientific papers. This study tries to identify and quantify the number of citations to Wikipedia in the papers indexed by the ISI Web of Science, studying the citation behavior of authors who have published papers in journals indexed by this database. Another simple search was conducted in order to analyze the number of citations to Britannica in the Cited Work=(Britannica*) AND Cited Year=(2004-2009). The result showed that Britannica was cited only 10 times by 10 different subject areas and only in English language documents. The data show that Wikipedia is cited 26 times more than Britannica. Although, the credibility and reliability of content of Wikipedia as an authoritative reference source was widely criticized (e.g., Lih, 2004; Andrew et al., 2005; Korfiatis, Poulos, & Bokos, 2006), it is cited more than Britannica. The significance of Wikipedia from a citation analysis point of view goes well beyond open access and enhanced opportunities for citation.